NVMain: An Architectural-Level Main Memory Simulator for Emerging Non-volatile Memories

Emerging non-volatile memory (NVM) technologies, such as PCRAM and STT-RAM, have demonstrated great potentials to be the candidates as replacement for DRAM-based main memory design for computer systems. It is important for computer architects to model such emerging memory technologies at the architecture level, to understand the benefits and limitations for better utilizing them to improve the performance/energy/reliability of future computing systems. In this paper, we introduce an architectural-level simulator called NV Main, which can model main memory design with both DRAM and emerging non-volatile memory technologies, and can facilitate designers to perform design space explorations utilizing these emerging memory technologies. We discuss design points of the simulator and provide validation of the model, along with case studies on using the tool for design space explorations.